The proof that Community Consolidated Elementary District 21's new food vendor is doing a better job than the last company is found in the garbage. Take a peek inside that nearby trash can, district spokeswoman Kara Beach offers.

"Kids are taking meals, and they're eating the complete meal," Beach said. "It's not ending up in the garbage."

And OrganicLife, LLC, the district's new food provider, has trained its employees to help students pick out the right balance of nutrition — because kids who buy the proper combinations of grains, meats and produce mean state and federal reimbursements for the schools.

"Our cashiers are well-trained in how to guide them to get a complete meal," said Jonas Falk, CEO of OrganicLife.

OrganicLife and Andrew Kruzich, the district's director of business services, gave an update to the School Board during their January meeting of how the new vendor fared during their first semester with District 21.

Kruzich told the board that since OrganicLife replaced Chartwells School Dining during summer break, the percentage of students buying meals at school has risen: 57.8 percent for 2014-15, 60.7 percent for the fall of 2015.

During that discussion, board member Debbi McAtee said she had seen the difference in the behavior of her daughter, who is now a daily school diner.

Part of the difference, Falk said in a later conversation, is the number and variety of options the company that he and president Justin Rolls founded 10 years ago gives the students. Kids will always want pizza and burgers, he noted, but set ratatouille or butternut squash in front of them, and a few will give it a try.

But a major part of the difference, he said, is how his group makes its food: in London Middle School's kitchen. Rather than owning and operating its own facility, then freezing, distributing and reheating its products from there, Organic Life prepares their meats, bread, fruits and vegetables inside District 21's primary cooking facility. The much shorter trip from 1001 W. Dundee Road in Wheeling to the relatively nearby other schools allows the food to stay fresh, Falk said.

"It's an actual, functioning restaurant kitchen, as opposed to a reheat," he said.

The company employees about 1,000 workers, has contracts with numerous districts around the state, and has plans to expand outside Illinois, Falk said —but in most of their districts, they find that cooking in someone else's kitchen is rarely a problem. Most districts have capable, and fairly low-mileage equipment, he said, because the vendors who came before them used them mostly for reheating.

"All of these schools have beautiful kitchens," he said.

Kruzich agreed that OrganicLife was using the London kitchen to a greater extent than Chartwells did.

"I've seen the food firsthand," he said. "They have a higher grade of employee. 'Chef,' if you will."

And he has tasted some of the products, too. Kruzich said he likes the calzones; Beach prefers their breakfast snacks, and, she "can't say enough about the cookies."

However, contrary to the company's name, Falk noted that none of their food is certified as "organic."

Beach and Kruzich said that a state law requires districts to take bids for new cafeteria contracts at least every five years. The same law mandates that schools accept the lowest "responsible" bid. When District 21 sought bids for its next food vendor, OrganicLife was the lowest of the qualified parties. They signed a year-to-year deal on May 21, beginning at $1.5 million with CPI and other escalators built in.

So how can paying all those employees to prepare food fresh, at all those locations around Illinois, be less expensive than processing in a single location?

"Cooking from scratch is a lot cheaper," Falk answered. "It's obviously a little more work, but it's less expensive than you think."

District 21 takes part in the National School Lunch Program, and Kruzich said the goal for its food service program is always to break even, which it generally did with Chartwells.

During the January board meeting, officials discussed how that outcome might improve, though: OrganicLife reminds its young customers to pick up combinations of foods that will lead to reimbursements for the schools.

Beach and Kruzich detailed the Illinois State Board of Education's five categories that school foods fall into — meat or meat alternatives, dairy, vegetables, fruits and grains. If kids put at least three of those five categories in their meals, that cues a reimbursement. The cashiers in the school cafeterias are OrganicLife employees, and as Falk told the School Board, the company trains them to help kids pick out at least three of the right categories.

"Those are very highly governed programs," Falk said of working within the boundaries of the NSLP.